Media trust among university students during the COVID-19 pandemic in Ukraine

The worldwide pandemic exacerbated the new role of the media. If pre-viously the discussion was on whether new or traditional media hadprimacy in popularity and exposure, nowadays the question is whethercommunicating health issues through social and traditional media leads to a better understanding of their content and more trust in both types of media. We surveyed Ukrainian university students to examine their a tti-tude towards information on coronavirus presented in the media. Resultsshowed that although students generally prefer to use Internet news, trustin traditional media increased during the pandemic. Furthermore, weexamined a general psychological portrait of young people derived fromtrust in the media. In the group of students who trust media information,we found indifference (39% of respondents) and helplessness(24.4%). In the group, convinced that the media were hiding the actual situation,anger p revailed(32.4%). The third group, confident that the media exag-gerate everything, experienced indifference, and anger(38.5% and32.7%, respectively). We may conclude that desire to learn more accurateand unbiased information firsthand indicates students' attitude towardstraditionalmediaasmorereliablesourcesofinformationinUkraine.